Recall
Boswell’s account of the April 30, 1773, dinner at the home of Johnson’s friend
Topham Beauclerk. With Lord Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds and others, Johnson
has great fun at Oliver Goldsmith’s expense (“he always gets the better when he
argues alone”). Johnson’s next victim is William Robertson, author of the two-volume
History of Scotland 1542-1603 (1753).
He’s a Scot, of course, and fellow-Scot Boswell defends him against Johnson’s dismissal
of Robertson’s “verbiage.” Among his charges against the historian:
“It
is not history. It is imagination.”
“Robertson is like a man who has packed gold
in wool: the wool takes up more room than the gold.”
“No
man will read Robertson’s cumbrous detail.”
Then
Johnson, ever vigilant for evidence of vanity, moves on from the specific to the general:
“I
would say to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his
pupils: `Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage
which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.’”
Kill
the little darlings, as a city editor in Indiana once told me. Whatever elicits
that little tingle of ego-satisfaction – beware. Writing involves gratification
and its denial. In June 1784, just six months before Johnson’s death, Boswell
recounts this exchange, a variation on the advice he rendered above:
“Miss
Adams: `Do you think, Sir, you could make your Ramblers better?’ Johnson: `Certainly
I could.’ Boswell: `I'll lay a bet, Sir, you cannot.’ Johnson: `But I will,
Sir, if I choose. I shall make the best of them you shall pick out, better.’
Boswell: `But you may add to them. I will not allow of that.’ Johnson: `Nay,
Sir, there are three ways of making them better; --putting out, --adding, --or
correcting.’”
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